Grubbers coach says club’s culture is in need of a change
OCEAN Grove will spend the final two months of the season identifying which players genuinely want to play for the club and which ones are contributing to what coach Jordan Jones has described as a culture in desperate need of change. The Grubbers went goalless in the first half against Anglesea on Saturday and ultimately suffered a 104-point defeat at Alcoa Oval — a remarkable turnaround considering they won the corresponding match in Round 5 this year by 36 points. With finals out of the equation, Jones, who is one of several Ocean Grove players out with injury, said he was preparing for a busy period after this weekend’s bye, during which he wanted to ensure the culture within his playing group started trending in the right direction. “I want to change the mindset and get the boys’ effort and care factor to want to go and play changed,” Jones said. “We have to train the culture to become more professional and start calling blokes out if they are not up to our standards and really raise the bar. “We have to (get rid of) blokes who don’t want to be here and who don’t want to do what we do and do it the way we want to do it. “It starts with how we go about it during the week at training and the intensity and effort and standards we set there, and then it will start reflecting in games.
“After halftime, the boys came out and their effort and their energy and want was there, and we kicked two goals in the third quarter, but then it dropped away again because they kicked three or four and we dropped our heads again.
“So I want to start thinning out that culture and having blokes pull their teammates up and telling them it isn’t good enough, but we don’t have enough leaders in the group at the moment.”
Jones, in his first year at the helm at Ocean Grove, said that personnel issues and the health of his team’s list had contributed to results not going its way since the start of the year.
But he stopped short of suggesting his playing group had “slipped away”.
He did concede, however, that the 104-point margin was a fair reflection of the gap between where the Grubbers were at compared to a finals contender like Anglesea.
“At this stage I’d say it is, yes,” he said.
“It absolutely bucketed down and they still managed to have more than 20 scoring shots in the second half.
“We obviously have a lot of guys out at the moment, which doesn’t help, but we are giving some young guys a bit of experience and hopefully they will be better for it down the track.
“We are going to go through some heartache and some tough times, but hopefully in the long run it will be for the better.
“We can’t get that consistency and that is probably the hardest thing for a young footballer to get in their game … so if we can close that gap over time it will make us a little better.”